Here's an interesting theory we haven't heard: apparently, according to this piece in the NYT, holding a gun causes a hormonal reaction in men.

Handling a gun stirs a hormonal reaction in men that primes them for aggression, new research suggests.

Psychologists at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., enrolled 30 male students in what they described as a taste study. The researchers took saliva samples from the students and measured testosterone levels.

They then seated the young men, one at a time, at a table in a bare room; on the table were pieces of paper and either the board game Mouse Trap or a large handgun.

Their instructions: take apart the game or the gun and write directions for assembly and disassembly.

Fifteen minutes later, the psychologists measured saliva testosterone again and found that the levels had spiked in men who had handled the gun but had stayed steady in those working with the board game.

You got us as to what this means, of course. Could be that a gun represents a threat, and so when these guys hold a gun, their chemical levels jump. The experiment didn't test adrenaline, but we're guessing that that chemical would probably jump as well. Explains what gun guys refer to as, in the case of the .50 caliber rifle, "the .50 thrill." But what gun guys don't realize is that that "thrill" is costing this country lives, every single day. Is it worth getting this testosterone kick when it means the death of innocents?

The other, perhaps even more interesting part of the study showed that not only did the presence of a gun increase the testosterone levels, it also increased aggressiveness.

The "taste sensitivity" phase of the experiment was in fact intended to measure aggressive impulses. After the writing assignment, the young men were asked to rate the taste of a drink, a cup of water with a drop of hot sauce in it. They were then told to prepare a drink for the next person in the experiment, adding as much hot sauce as they liked.

"Those who had handled the gun put in about three times as much as the others — 13 grams on average, which is a lot," said Tim Kasser, one of the authors. He worked with Francis McAndrew, also of Knox, and Jennifer Klinesmith, a former student who had the idea for the study, due to appear in Psychological Science.

Critics of research linking guns to aggressiveness have argued that people who handle guns in experiments tend to act out or think violent thoughts simply because they sense the expectations of the experimenters. The same could be true of this study: the students might have perceived the nature of the study, consciously or not, and acted differently.

Yet the aggression was not entirely psychological: the higher the peaks in testosterone, the more hot sauce the students dumped into the drink. And once they learned the real aims of the study, several were disappointed that their cocktails would not be served to a fellow student.

So much for the idea of a "law-abiding gun owner." The presence of a gun, no mattter who's holding it, means there is a hugely increased chance of violence. Here's scientific proof that no matter how much a gun guys claims he's "one of the good gun owners," and not a criminal, he's just one trigger pull away from becoming the problem. Guns represent nothing but threat and danger. The sooner we get rid of the gun, the safer we'll all be.